Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/219

 intensity the margins of the open space beside the river. He, also, had heard the turkey-call which had come to the ears of Koe-Ishto in the rhododendron thicket. From his post in the air he had been able to note accurately the direction from which the sound had come; and since then he had been waiting impatiently but confidently for the gobbler to emerge from the woods and walk across the open to the water's edge.

Suddenly the long yellow-brown body of the puma crouching in the alder hedge quivered and grew tense and hard; and in that same moment the head of the circling eagle dropped lower, his great yellow feet with their armament of black trenchant claws opened and shut convulsively, his deep-set eyes glowed momentarily as though a flash of inner fire had lit them. A half-minute more he circled quietly, his eyes never shifting from his prey. Then, his dark wings half-closed his banded tail spread, his talons opened wide beneath him, he shot downward through the singing air.

Few of the wild folk are blessed with keener hearing than the wild turkey. Yet because the roar of a distant waterfall filled the air, a fatal moment elapsed before the gobbler sensed a strange, low, humming sound, faint yet somehow portentous and menacing. Instantly he turned and raced for the thododendron thicket. Another quarter-second and